A Comedy of Masks | Page 7

in the two little rooms beneath the tiles which he rented in Bloomsbury, and which served him as bedroom and studio; and for a few weeks he finished sketches by day, and wrote sonnets for magazines, and frivolous articles for dailies, by night. And, strange to say, though there were times when success seemed very hard to grasp, and when he was obliged to forestall quarter-day, and even to borrow money from Rainham--when that bird of passage was within reach--he sold sketches from time to time; he obtained commissions for portraits; and the editors occasionally read and retained his contributions.
In course of time he moved further west, to the then unfashionable neighbourhood of Holland Park, and devoted his energies to the production of a work which should make an impression at the Academy. It was his first large picture in oils, an anonymous portrait, treated with all the audacity and chic of the modern French school, of a fair-haired girl in a quaint fancy dress, standing under the soft light of Japanese lanterns, in a conservatory, with a background of masses of flowers.
And when it was finished, Rainham and the small coterie of artists who were intimate with Lightmark were generously enthusiastic in their expressions of approval.
"But I don't know about the Academy, old man," said one of these critics dubiously, after the first spontaneous outburst of discussion. "Of course it's good enough, but it's not exactly their style, you know. The old duffers on the Hanging Committee wouldn't understand it----"
And though Lightmark maintained his intention in the face of this criticism, the picture was never submitted to the hangers. Rainham brought a wealthy American ship-owner to see it, and when the committee sat in judgment, the work was already on the high seas on its way to New York.
After all, Lightmark owed his nascent reputation to work of a less important nature--a few landscapes which appeared on the walls of Bond Street galleries, and were transferred in course of time to fashionable drawing-rooms; a few portraits, which the uninitiated thought admirable because they were so "like." Moreover, he could flatter discreetly, and he took care not to bore his sitter; two admirable qualities in a portrait-painter who desires to succeed.
CHAPTER III
It was to one of his sitters that Lightmark owed his introduction to the Sylvesters. Charles Sylvester had been told that Lightmark was a man who would certainly achieve greatness, and he felt that here was an opportunity to add all hitherto missing leaf to his laurels, by constituting himself a patron of art, a position not often attained by young barristers even when, as in Sylvester's case, they have already designs upon a snug constituency.
Sylvester began by giving his _prot��g��_ a commission to paint his mother's portrait, and before this work was finished a very appreciable degree of intimacy had sprung up between the Sylvester family and the young painter, who found no difficulty in gratifying a woman-of-the-world's passion for small-talk and fashionable intelligence--judiciously culled from the columns of the daily newspapers with the art of a practised wielder of the scissors and paste-brush.
With Miss Sylvester he had a less easy task. She was a girl who had from a very early age been accustomed to have her impressions moulded by her self-assertive elder brother; and he, at any rate at first, had been careful to show that he regarded Lightmark as an object of his patronage rather than as a friend who could meet him on his own exalted level. He had been known, in his earlier years, to speak somewhat contemptuously of "artists"; and, indeed, his want of sympathy with Bohemians in general had given Eve occasion for much wondering mental comment, when her brother first spoke of introducing the portrait-painter to the family circle.
However, brotherly rule over a girl's opinions is apt to be disestablished when she draws near the autumn of her teens; and after her emancipation from the schoolroom and short frocks, Miss Eve began to think it was time that she should be allowed to entertain and express views of her own. And after her first ball, an occasion on which her programme had speedily been besieged, and the _d��butante_ marked as dangerous by the observant mothers of marriageable sons and daughters--after this important function, even Charles had begun to regard his pretty sister with a certain amount of deference. He certainly had reason to congratulate himself on having so attractive a young person to pour out his coffee and compose his "buttonholes" before he started for chambers in the morning. Eve was at an age when the wild-rose tints of a complexion fostered by judicious walks and schoolroom teas had not yet yielded to the baneful influence of late dinners and the other orgies which society conducts in an unduly-heated atmosphere.